CleanTech News

Researchers have succeeded in imaging the distribution of frozen and liquid water in a hydrogen fuel cell directly for the first time. The method opens up the prospect of studying one of the main problems of using fuel cells to power vehicles: ice can clog the pores in the fuel cells and affect their performance.

Particles of soot floating through the air and comets hurtling through space have at least one thing in common: 0.36. That, reports a research group, is the measure of how dense they will get under normal conditions, and it?s a value that seems to be constant for similar aggregates across an impressively wide size range from nanometers to tens of meters.

Concentrating Solar Power projects would add additional value of 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt hour to utility-scale solar energy in California where 33 percent renewables will be mandated in six years, a new report by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found.

The SOPCAWIND tool is a piece of software that facilitates the design of wind farms, bearing in mind not only the aspects of energy productivity but also the possible impact the wind farm may have on the environment, radars or other telecommunications systems in the vicinity. It also assesses acoustic noise, the effect of shadow on nearby housing, and applies criteria for heritage protection or clearance from transport networks and certain facilities.

Helping farmers around the globe apply more-precise amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer can help combat climate change. In a new study, researchers provide an improved prediction of nitrogen fertilizer's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural fields.

Scientists at the University of York are playing a key role in the quest for a better understanding of how a recently discovered family of enzymes can degrade hard-to-digest biomass into its constituent sugars.

Siemens has developed a technology to use waste heat, which previously had gone unused, to generate electricity. The solution employs silicone oils, which have a lower enthalpy of vaporization than water, and is needed because waste heat produced in industrial plants or power stations often does not have enough energy to drive a turbine with steam.